It’s a good time to be a working woman

THE pandemic was so bad for working women, especially mothers, that it was known in some quarters as the “she-cession”. But the recovery – and can we please not call it the “she-covery” – has been pretty good for them.

In the last few years, after decades of stagnation, women have made progress at closing both the labour gap and the wage gap. The jobs market has undergone some big changes that favour women – though they also make women more vulnerable if it turns.

For most of the industrial era, women’s work was an afterthought. Not only did women face discrimination in the workplace, but there was an expectation they’d stop work once they had a family. When social norms and technology changed, however, so did women’s leverage in the labour force.